Raise your hand if you have heard one of the statements above from someone in leadership in response to a call for better customer understanding.

These are among the most popular statements in corporate board rooms, which is ironic because every year there’s a parade of top global executive surveys from leading consulting firms where top corporate leaders proclaim that this year one of their top initiatives will be to better understand their customers. Forgive me for asking, but isn’t that what last year’s survey said?

What can explain these executives’ seeming inability to grasp what their customers need and want? And why do we continually witness this management double-talk on the journey to the temple of the customer?

I believe it’s because there’s a third rail in business. The third rail, of course, is a metaphor for any issue so controversial that it is untouchable, like the electric rail often found in the center of a railroad track. Grab hold and electrocution will surely follow.

This third rail is leadership’s reluctance to admit that customers are really in charge in today’s marketplace. They hold all the cards. They pick the winners and discard the losers. They do it fast and often brutally. This truth is often difficult for senior executives to wrap their minds around because it violates everything they were taught in MBA programs and by their business mentors. After all, customers will be just fine with more of the same, right?

Wrong. I was reminded of this third-rail idea when I read a recent WSJ interview with HTC CEO Peter Chou. In short, HTC’s profits plummeted 79 percent year-over-year in the third quarter of 2012 alone. In 2010, HTC was the top US Android producer but ComScore now reports they have slipped to fifth place in smartphone production. Looking for an easy target, Chou laid the blame squarely at the feet of marketing. “Our competitors were too strong and very resourceful, pouring lots of money into marketing. We haven’t done enough on the marketing front,” he said. He recently brought over a former Motorola CMO to lead HTC’s new “Marketing 2.0” initiative.

Chou also made the obligatory bow to the customer when he said, “The most important thing is to have unique products that appeal to consumers,” while explaining that HTC just doesn’t have the resources of competitors like Apple and Samsung. This sadly sounds all too familiar.

After observing this behavior for much of my career as both an insider and outsider, I believe the number one reason that companies know so little about their customers is that they don’t take them seriously. If I had a quarter for every eye that I have seen roll when the subject of customer insight has come up in senior level meetings, I would be a rich man.

What is surprising is that, in my experience, the eye rollers aren’t specific to any silo within a company, be they from operations, IT, finance, HR and yes, even marketing. The eye rolling usually starts when someone genuinely says that the company is missing the mark by not being immersed in what the customer thinks and does. I’ve made a list of the top 31 responses I have heard over the years as to why enterprises have not dedicated more resources to customer insight, experience, service or satisfaction. Here they are. Do any of these sound familiar?

1. “We don’t really have consensus around this yet.”

2. “We already tried that.”

3. “We’ve never tried that before.”

4. “We need a new ad campaign.”

5. “We need a new ad agency.”

6. “We need a new marketing guy.”

7. “We need a new strategy.”

8. “This is the way we’ve always done it.”

9. “This really needs a lot more thought.”

10. “Isn’t this what our ad agency is for?”

11. “It’s just too radical.”

12. “Is this a best practice?”

13. “If (the leading competitor) isn’t doing it, why should we?”

14. “Didn’t we have a task force last year?”

15. "We should appoint a task force.”

16. “This isn’t in the budget.”

17. “It’s too expensive.”

18. “Customers just expect too much these days. Give ‘em an inch and they’ll take a mile.”